#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge – Day 12

Day 12 – Most Expensive Book:

I’m back again today with another Toni Morrison. Beloved and Song of Solomon are my most expensive
books. They are both from the Everyman’s Library collection. Beautifully made and they look great on my shelves. Now the thing that really stumped me is this. When I first looked into getting these editions I was so thrilled and was plotting where I’d display them on my shelves. Unfortunately, when I finally went to order them I realized that Everyman’s Library only had Beloved and Song of Solomon. I couldn’t believe it. I was so disappointed and spent the rest of the time trying to figure how they could justify only have 2 of Toni Morrison’s books in their collection. Two years later and I till can’t figure it out. But, don’t you just love the great picture of Morrison on the cover? What expressive eyes! What’s your most expensive book?

Long before it was available (and popular) in the US, before it won any awards, and before it was optioned for a Made-for-TV movie; I stumbled across an international review of The Book of Negroes that made me want to read it immediately. I ordered it (hardback, Canadian dollars, full price) directly from the Canadian publisher and after taxes, international shipping and handling, I paid about $40-45 US for a first edition, hardback copy. I have no regrets…it’s one of my favorite historical fiction novels.

Yes The Book of Negroes has been recommended to me by quite a few people and I will be getting to it soon. I’m glad you paid and felt it was worth it. If it’s a beauty and you really love the book, why not splurge to have a beautiful edition. The beautiful edition that never gets loaned out. 😉

Everyman Library tend to only publish a couple of the authors’ works in their editions, particularly when it’s a contemporary author. The Remains of The Day for instance, or Midnight’s Children. Sometimes they do a bind up of a handful of novels, but I don’t know of an instance where they publish an author’s entire bibliography unless in the white editions of older authors, which is annoying indeed! No doubt she will be published in the (expensive), but very high quality Library of America series in the distant future.

I forewarn that it doesn’t yet look like they’ve any plans to Publish her works, but they’ve already published Philip Roth, who is of her generation, which suggests they are starting to branch into more contemporary literature, and for them not to publish Toni Morrison’s bibliography – the only novelist of that generation in America to have won the Nobel prize – at least within the next 5 years would frankly be absurd!

Funnily enough, I have just found something online and I feel I must report it back to you! There was a box set of hardback books printed in the 90s called “The Collected Novels of Toni Morrison” going up to Jazz, and it looks beautiful. It’s quite expensive, and you can only get it second hand, but it is a beautiful collection of all her novels up to a point!

I couldn’t tell you, as I do not know – I only know it was published by Alfred A. Knopf and printed in 1994 after she won the Nobel prize and the product description is as follows:

“Beautiful cloth-bound editions of the Nobel Prize–winning author’s first six novels—her seminal works, together for the first time in one box set: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz.”

To look at pictures, I would recommend Abebooks or Amazon – the cheapest copy I can currently find is around £130, which is very pricey!

The Franklin Library also have a couple of her novels leather-bound with golden edges and signed, which indeed look very beautiful! I think it’s Jazz and Tar Baby, not sure!

I think my most expensive—and I’m sorry Didi but I must share two instead of one because they are both so awesome—are “coffee table” editions. One is Jennifer Dunning’s Geoffrey Holder A Life in Theater, Dance, and ART; and Reflections in Black A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present by Deborah Willis.